This Is This

I had a dream last night I was at a Christmas work lunch and someone asked me about my watch. It’s a 1962 Omega Seamaster which he bought in Panama in that year on his way to a new life in New Zealand. In those days it took three weeks to get there, so I don’t know why he was so preoccupied with timekeeping, but few family stories have much logic to them.

In my dream, a colleague remarked upon it and I went into the Christopher Walken speech from Pulp Fiction, getting it wrong but not caring.

“You’re fatha’s wahtch. We were shot down …over Hanoi. He carried this watch - up his ass. And I’d be damned if some slope was gonna get his hands on your fatha’s wahtch.”

It winds itself, but you have to keep moving to keep it charged up. It I don’t wear it for a day, it grinds to a halt, just like this blog.

Getting it wrong and not caring is something I don’t normally do. Personality traits of self-consciousness and aptitude mean I don’t often attempt to do something until I think I can do it.

And even saying that goes against the grain because maybe now you’re thinking that I think I can play music, write video posts, take pictures and write. Well, I can, but I balance that by thinking those things are easy. I don’t know my seven times table. It’s stuff like that I find difficult.

You get those people on X-Factor who can not sing and come out thinking they have nailed the audition? They really fucking scare me. Because they truly don’t know how awful they are but they keep going.

I wonder - I hope - that they have no talent filter at all. For example, if they saw someone else out of tune with no moves, I’d like to think they would think that performance was good. I would be worried if they thought it was awful but theirs was OK. I would be worried that I was one of those people.

Also on This Is This
I’ve had this idea for an opera.
Pirates of Zen Pants.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 8:41 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.